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PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
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(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Tuesday
, Sept. 23, 2008GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Obama - no headway with Hillary supporters
poll shows equal gains with McCain
An
Associated Press-Yahoo News poll shows that among adults who backed
his rival during their bitter primary campaign, 58 percent now support
Obama. That is the same percentage who said so in June, when Clinton
ended her bid and urged her backers to line up behind the Democratic
senator from Illinois.
The poll shows that while Obama has gained ground among Clinton's supporters - 69 percent view him favorably now, up 9 percentage points from June - this has yet to translate into more of their support.
In part, this is because their positive views of Republican presidential nominee John McCain have also improved during this period.
Those supporting McCain have also edged up from 21 percent to 28 percent, with the number of undecided staying constant, the survey showed.
Bill Clinton on Sarah
Palin:
"I get why she's hot out there..."
"Why don't we like them and celebrate
them
and be happy for her
elevation to the ticket?
And just say that she
was a good choice
for him and we disagree with them?"
Bill Clinton said Monday he understands why Sarah Palin is popular in the heartland: because people relate to her.
"I come from Arkansas, I get why she's hot out there," Clinton said. "Why she's doing well."
Speaking to reporters b
efore his Clinton Global Initiative meeting,
the former president described Palin's appeal by adding, "People look
at her, and they say, 'All those kids. Something that happens in
everybody's family. I'm glad she loves her daughter and she's not
ashamed of her. Glad that girl's going around with her boyfriend. Glad
they're going to get married.'"
Clinton said voters would think, "I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They're wonderful children. They're wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy."
more Bill Clinton:
Hillary was best VP pick 'politically'
“I like Sen. Biden a lot. I think he was a good choice,” the former president said, before adding of his wife, “She would have been the best politically, at least in the short run, because of her enormous support in the country.”
and more
Hillary didn't want to be Obama's veep
Obama, McCain likely to skip vote on financial bailout
Sen.
John McCain (R- Ariz.) has no plans to return to
Washington this week, even though on Monday he expressed
discomfort with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s
trillion-dollar bailout plan and has offered his own
rescue proposal.
“Sen. McCain is monitoring the situation closely,” said campaign co-manager Steve Schmidt on a conference call Monday. “We will see how this unfolds this week.”
McCain “retains his rights to evaluate it as it goes along and make a final decision,” said co-manager Rick Davis.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also looks like a no-show.
Senior Obama strategist Robert Gibbs said the campaign
would be monitoring the process as it unfolds this week,
but as of Monday, the campaign would not commit to Obama
making the trip back to Washington – even though the
bailout proposal has taken a central role in Obama’s
stump speeches.
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain & Sarah Palin... today's headlines with excerpts
Palin to meet with 7 world leaders at U.N.
The
first-term Alaska governor plans to meet seven world leaders and
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in New York City this week,
where the U.N. General Assembly is convening. The meetings might help
her answer critics who say she is not ready to handle world affairs.
Palin obtained her first passport last year.
On Tuesday she will meet separately with Kissinger, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. On Wednesday she is to meet jointly with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko. She then will meet separately with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Palin also will sit down with rock star and humanitarian activist Bono...
Palin ouster from rally divides Jewish groups
The decision to disinvite Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin from an anti-Iran rally in front of the United Nations Monday has divided Jewish groups in New York City.
Palin’s invitation was revoked after Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., canceled her appearance last week because she didn’t want to share a platform with the Republican Party’s rising star. That has led to an angry reaction among Jewish leaders, both Republican and Democrat, who believe the Alaska governor should have been heard.
... Sources say the axes were out for Palin as soon as Sen. Clinton pulled out because she did not want to attend the same event as the Republican vice presidential candidate...
McCain campaign savages New York Times
"Whatever
the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a
journalistic organization," said Schmidt on a conference call with
reporters.
"It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama.
"This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be, but let's not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is."
"It is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate -- in this case, John McCain."
The McCain campaign complaints were reminiscent of comments by the campaign of former Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton, which claimed the media was giving Obama an easy ride and not properly "vetting" his candidacy.
Nader drawing votes - from McCain
Ralph
Nader thinks he will be a factor in the presidential race again this
year, but this time, he says, he is drawing votes from the Republican
ticket.
He sparked the wrath of Democrats in 2000, when many said his third-party candidacy cost Al Gore the election.
He strongly disputes that notion — “There were 19 independent variables, and each one would have put Gore in the White House” he said in an interview today, citing the Supreme Court decision and Mr. Gore’s loss of his home state of Tennessee among them. And he called up The Caucus to boast that he seems to be draining votes from Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, not Senator Barack Obama, the Democrat’s presidential candidate.
His evidence? He said polls show that when his name is added to the mix, Mr. McCain’s numbers go down...
Barack Obama & Joe Biden... today's headlines with excerpts'
...as NBC's Matt Lauer pointed out, scarcely three minutes after McCain said he opposed the AIG bailout last week, "in an interview with Meredith Vieira, Joe Biden, your running mate was asked the exact same question, 'should the federal government bailout AIG?' And he said, 'No, the federal government should not bailout AIG. And I think that in that situation," Obama said, "I think Joe should have waited as well."
"But it's the kind of thing that drives people crazy about politics," Lauer said. "It sounds like you were trying to score some political points against John McCain using his words, when your own running mate had used very similar words."
So much for the 50-state strategy: Obama vacates North Dakota
Senator
Barack Obama started out the general election campaign with a strategy
to inundate all 50 states with ground troops and extensive
get-out-the-vote efforts. But at least one state has dropped off the
list.
The campaign closed down its offices in North Dakota and transferred most of its staff members to neighboring Minnesota and Wisconsin, crucial swing states for Mr. Obama.
The Obama campaign also has a minimal staff in some states, including Georgia, Alaska and Idaho, implicitly acknowledging that it has given up on winning there.
Rules 'bent' to provide Obama advisers loans
Two Barack Obama advisers, Franklin Raines and James Johnson, received preferential home loans as industry favors, apparently in deference to their executive positions heading Fannie Mae.
Raines and Johnson, as "friends of Angelo Mozilo," the chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corp. – the now bankrupt high-flying loan originator in the sub-prime mortgage debacle – were funneled millions of dollars for personal home loans. Mozilo himself made exceptions from Countrywide policy to provide the two Fannie Mae CEO's "sweetheart deals."
Obama's outspoken criticism of Mozilo's exceptionally high compensation is again under attack as hypocritical in view of the preferential loans to Raines and Johnson and the degree to which Countrywide's failed sub-prime loans contributed to the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and last week's mortgage-related crisis on Wall Street.
Barack Obama's running mate says a campaign ad that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate was "terrible" and would not have been done had he known about it.
... Asked why it was done, he said:
"I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we'd
have never done it."
Biden fabricates Afghanistan helicopter story
Biden's story:
"If
you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin
Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden said. "Come back to
the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star
general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those
mountains. I can tell you where they are."
Biden said that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "says he’ll follow them to the gates of hell. You don’t have to go to hell. Just go to Pakistan. Just go to that area. That superhighway of terror that exists between Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Jake Tapper investigates:
We hadn't heard before about Biden's helicopter being forced down, so we did some Googling.
... In February 2008, Biden -- along with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. -- was on a chopper that made an emergency landing in the mountains of Afghanistan.
A snowstorm had forced them down.
No one was injured, and the Associated Press reported at the time that "the senators and their delegation returned to Bagram Air Base in a motor convoy, and left for Turkey.
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